Every week, I offer a glimpse of the kind of intelligence assessments that are likely to come across the desk of the President of the United States. Modeled on the President's Daily Briefing, or PDB, which the director of national intelligence prepares for the President almost daily, my Presidential Weekly Briefing focuses on the topics and issues the President needs to know to make informed decisions.

Every week, I offer a glimpse of the kind of intelligence assessments that are likely to come across the desk of the President of the United States. Modeled on the President's Daily Briefing, or PDB, which the director of national intelligence prepares for the President almost daily, my Presidential Weekly Briefing focuses on the topics and issues the President needs to know to make informed decisions.

On October 10, 1953, V.S. Naipaul sent a telegram home to his family in Trinidad. At that time, Naipaul was an indigent student at University College, Oxford; he had arrived in England on a scholarship and had begun writing brief pieces for the BBC's Caribbean Voices program. Naipaul, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001, died Saturday in London at the age of 85.

Nobel Prize-winning novelist V.S. Naipaul, who was born in Trinidad but lived most of his life in England, died in his London home Saturday, Britain's Press Association reported, citing Naipaul's wife.

High above one of the most hotly contested regions in the world, CNN was given a rare look Friday at the Chinese government's rapidly expanding militarization of the South China Sea from a US reconnaissance plane.

High above one of the most hotly contested regions in the world, CNN's Ivan Watson was given a rare look at the Chinese government's rapidly expanding militarization of the South China Sea from a US reconnaissance plane.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif welcomed his North Korean counterpart, Ri Yong Ho, to Tehran on Tuesday, hours after the United States reintroduced sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

A 6.9 magnitude quake struck off the island of Lambok in Indonesia on Sunday, killing at least 98 people and injuring more than 200. An estimated 20,000 people are displaced, according to Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, head of Indonesia's disaster management department.

Deadly fires have scorched swaths of the Northern Hemisphere this summer, from California to Arctic Sweden and down to Greece on the sunny Mediterranean. Drought in Europe has turned verdant land barren, while people in Japan and Korea are dying from record-breaking heat.